Classics Blog List

Some may see this new icon on my blog: This is a side project I am working on and it may be of interest to some of my colleagues out there (and if so, please contact me).  More details will be forthcoming soon.

40 Best Blogs for Classics Geeks

From last year but still a great resource.  Glad to see my friend David Meadows is featured! Antiquity continues to impact today’s cultural, political, linguistic, artistic and philosophical climate, so it makes perfect sense that history buffs scramble to study the melange of civilizations that characterized the era. Digital archivists especially enjoy cataloging the past [...]

Agnosticism and Jesus and What it Means

Joel Watts recently wrote: One cannot easily deny their association with a group if they spend all of their time defending the ‘quality’, ‘truth’ claims, or ‘validity’ of said group. Pick a side, Tom. via Pick a side, Tom | Unsettled Christianity. But I refuse to do so.  The only honest position in this whole [...]

Of Scholars and Things: Bart Ehrman, Pride, and Credibility

καλεῖ δ᾽ ἀκούοντας οὐδὲν ἐν μέσᾳ δυσπαλεῖ τε δίνᾳ: γελᾷ δὲ δαίμων ἐπ᾽ ἀνδρὶ θερμῷ, τὸν οὔποτ᾽ αὐχοῦντ᾽ ἰδὼν ἀμαχάνοις δύαις λαπαδνὸν οὐδ᾽ ὑπερθέοντ᾽ ἄκραν: δι᾽ αἰῶνος δὲ τὸν πρὶν ὄλβον ἕρματι προσβαλὼν δίκας ὤλετ᾽ ἄκλαυτος, αἶστος. (Aeschylus, Eumenides 558-565) In Ehrman’s recent response to Carrier’s criticisms of his book, Ehrman writes the following (rather [...]

New Header Image and Updated ‘Mystery’

Because of my love for the Gnostics (and ancient mystery religions in general) I have thought it useful to update my blog header image and the ‘Of the Muses’ (upper-left column) information. I will not give out the passage of the Greek text (though many of you students of intertextuality and mimesis will pick up [...]

A Request for Easter Thoughts

As Easter approaches there will of course be an innumerable amount of garbage proclaiming to be ‘fact’ about the death and resurrection of Jesus.   Over years past, I have largely ignored this time of year; but this year I’d like to do something different.  I want to hear from you, my readers, and also my [...]

The Jonah Ossuary: The Physics of ‘Work’ and Data Interpretation

When I was in elementary school, the school itself was under heavy construction (it now looks completely different than it did when I attended).  So the fifth and sixth grade classes were held in trailers attached to the brick and mortar school by a wooden ramp.  All of our subjects were taught from these trailers [...]

Who Built the Jesus Family Tomb?

2012 is Shaping Up to be the Year of Fakes, Frauds, and Sensationalism

First, we had the picture of the Markan manuscript fragment that has widely been debunked as a fake. Now we have a ‘new’ 1500-year-old Bible with what appears to be gold lettering that just seems all sorts of odd. And just today, wouldn’t you know, a month and some days away from Easter, a new [...]

Mark Goodacre on the Markan Fragment

Mark Goodacre offers up some sage words on the Markan Fragment: As far as I am concerned, this settles the question.  So often we are faced with artifacts appearing on the antiquities market with unknown provenances, or vague tales about their being found in caves somewhere.  Not here.  The artifact is from no less a [...]